By John – Caro Babbo

The Cruise

Ovation of the Seas, 50º 57N 159º 22E, 7- May-2026 – We’re traveling at 20 knots in pretty calm water. It has been foggy. The ship has been blowing a fog horn: One long blast every two minutes.

There are 4100 guests and 1500 staff, close to 7000 people on board. Except at meals, it feels like less. At the start of meals, it is very crowded at lunch and breakfast. The other meals aren’t too bad. Most of the passengers have set times they eat at the same table with the same people, so there is some order.

Working our way to the next boat in Japan

North East of Yokohama, 2-MAY-2026 – Let’s start with Caro Babbo: She’s in slip 132 in Boat Haven in Port Townsend. We can keep her there until October first, as long as we don’t leave the slip for more than three days. Then they will cancel our agreement and give the slip to someone else. No, they didn’t tell us that when they offered the slip. I found out when I went to the office to confirm things. I raised it with Kristian and told him we should each think about it, and I did. I expect we’ll keep it there until we want to go sailing, and then won’t bring it back until October when we return to Point Hudson and slip 28.

‘‘Pretty Certain’’

Port Townsend, WA 23-FEB-2026 – We’re not moving the boat to Olympia for the summer.

‘‘It’s pretty certain that you’ll have a slip in Boat Haven,’’* is what Michele at the Point Hudson marina told me.

‘‘They called me and told me to tell you. I don’t know why they couldn’t just call you directly.’’

Neither do I.

‘‘So, you should stay.’’

I said, ‘‘Pretty certain?’’

It’s taken Ten Years…

I have it all figured out – just in time for this information to be useless.

Port Townsend, WA 19-Feb-2026 – This is what I have learned about my Taylors Stove. (I still am not sure whether an apostrophe belongs between the r and the s. I think it might.)

In ten years†, I’ve learned what fuel to use, and no matter what fuel I use, the burner will clog up. But it can be recovered.

Electric Lights, Not City Lights, Part 2

The shunt with minimal wires on the load side, connected to the starting battery with one yellow wire and a small gray wire to get its voltage in the app. The 60A terminal fuse in under the red cap.

Point Hudson, 17-FEB-2026 – The last post should have been two parts. It ran on forever. I’m sorry. This is part two. We can mourn the fact that it is not part three. That would have made everything easier to read.

I finally finished the project by removing the wires from the shunt to a bus block. I also removed the mass of negative wires from the negative terminal to an existing bus block. Fusing is the reason why the positive was moved to a new block, and the negative was moved to an exisitng one.

Electric lights, not city lights

Port Townsend, 8-FEB-2026 – There is a lot to learn, and a lot of ways to learn it. I installed LiFePO4 batteries in Caro Babbo. The battery was $500. The electronics, another $500. A thousand all up, not bad.

The Itch

This is a post I wrote four years ago that I did not publish. I like it and wanted to share.

Amtrak Train #11, south of Salinas, CA 13-APR-2022 – Once the itch starts it doesn’t leave. Time to leave for Homer is getting closer, the days between now and then are planned and full.

Jennifer and I are in motion, and feel like we will stay in motion until we leave Homer heading west. Yet, somehow, once we’re aboard we don’t feel like we’re in motion anymore. I would say we’re home, Jennifer would say we’re onboard. We’d both say we’re alone, and it’s quiet in both the literal sense and the more abstract.

Catsaway, Les Paul, Vesper, Les Paul once again Part 2

Port Townsend,WA, 17-JAN-2026 – I almost got what I wanted, and I can, if I want to use a phone app for anchor drag.

I have a number of things to talk about, the Predict Wind documentation and instructions along the way.

The lead-in diagram shows how the Raymarine NG is connected to the NMEA 2000 backbone. I’ll refer to NMEA 2000 as N2K.

Catsaway, Les Paul, Vesper, Les Paul once again

Port Townsend, WA, 13-JAN-2026 – As we add different electrical systems to Caro Babbo the number of WiFi networks we have climb. We find we have two sometimes three different WiFi networks running to access everything we want to use.

Saturday with the seals and Selkie

Eagle Island, 20-SEP-2025 – We’re continuing our travels around South Puget Sound. We traveled nine miles yesterday, four the day before, and twenty-something the day before that.

Not much traveling and no extra fuel tanks, something I can’t remember if I thought I would then get while we were in PT or not. I didn’t, so that is that.